Two Russellville restaurants have applied for private club permits that would allow them to sell alcohol by the drink.

Spence Roberts filed a private club application last month with the Alcoholic Beverage Control Division of the state Department of Finance and Administration for Italian Gardens, located in downtown Russellville.

If approved, Italian Gardens would become the second downtown restaurant granted a permit. Fat Daddy’s Bar-B-Que secured a permit earlier this year, in preparation for opening a downtown location this fall.

Also in September, Xia Lin filed a private club application on behalf of U-Like Oriental Buffet, located at 107 N. Elmira Ave.

If both applications are accepted, the restaurants would be the 15th and 16th to receive private club designations in Russellville. Venezia’s Italian Kitchen became the 14th private club in the city when its permit was approved and became effective Sept. 4.

Through a five percent tax on alcohol sales, the city of Russellville collected $60,225 in 2012 after drinkers spent more than $1.2 million at the city’s private clubs.

Can you hear the deafening silence coming from the county sheriff, the local ministerial alliance, and anyone else who doesn't care when special dispensation is given under the law? Wonder if Michael Langley would grant me a bootleggers license? Maybe a license to sell dope across the street from a university. Or run hookers. Is that illegal in a dry county?

Lets not get too drastic ChesterDrawers. Bringing restaurants a permit to sell alcohol brings up revenue and keeps ppl off the interstate drinking and driving having to go to blackwell. I work at a hotel and always get asked if their is a place to eat where they can get food and an alcoholic beverage. i can only give them a short list of place that do. That makes ppl not even want to come back to our town. most the ppl who ask are high up ppl who make good money. I believe as long as we keep alcohol out of gas stations and stay away from building liquor stores, restaurants who sell alcohol is a benefit.

I most humbly and respectfully would like to state that it causes me to be incensed and outraged when I see special dispensation in the law. One group (you and I) must obey the law and one single person has the authority to grant a reprieve from the abeyance of such.

Do you realize that it requires thirty percent of all registered voters to change the law, but it requires only the decision of one person, Michael Langly, head of ABC to grant the gift of distrubuting drugs directly across from a church in downtown Russellville.

The law either applies to everyone, or no one. And, no one will then have any respect for the law, or those who enforce it.